At the 2025 LEAP 2.0 API Governance Conference, a key theme emerged across multiple presentations: Successfully implementing API governance is far from being just a technical undertaking – it’s a business issue with people at its core.
As we pointed out in the new Universal API Governance Guide, it’s crucial to remember that your people are at the center of your governance process. And keeping this in mind will impact how you approach API governance from start to finish. Let us walk you through it…
Unlocking people power in your API governance
Why do enterprises implement API governance in the first place? While the benefits range from enhanced scalability to smoother compliance journeys, API governance is ultimately about empowering people to create and innovate. By giving them the guardrails to do so securely and efficiently, you gift developers everything they need to stay within their flow. Successful governance removes disruptions to that flow by levelling up reusability and discoverability and standardizing matters such as authorization processes.
Unlocking the power of your development teams in this way shortens your release cycles. It can make your developers happy and also those your enterprise serves, as you can deliver new products and updates to them faster.
Putting your people at the heart of governance
How do you get to this holy grail of governance implementation? Again, your people are the key.
Start by engaging your teams early and finding out what they’re already doing. Which tools and processes are they using? Which terminology? How does all this fit with your business objectives and what would work better? Consulting your teams on these questions will support buy-in to your API governance implementation efforts at an early stage. As author Bruno Pedro points out (and you can read more from Bruno here):
“Find a common element for what your API governance is delivering. Why are you doing API governance? What is it for? Once people understand, they can actually want to follow it instead of you having to make them.”
Your people are key to implementing your API governance successfully, as well as helping with the initial strategy. After all, once you’ve defined how your approach to governance will support your business needs, it’s time to put processes and policies in place that will meet those needs.
Ensuring these processes and policies make your people’s lives easier is crucial. Your governance can deliver golden guardrails for authorization, easily discoverable reusable elements, open standards for stellar interoperability and much more, all giving your people the peace of mind to create without worrying about security or breaking things.
On the flip side, if you don’t consult and implement in tune with your people, your teams will find workarounds, and you’ll lose the benefits of standardization and efficiency that successful API governance can deliver.
Keeping people engaged
Keeping connections between your people and your governance processes alive is an ongoing task. Governance success doesn’t stop at implementation; you’ll need regular reviews to look at what’s working well and what needs improvement.
This is a cross-function undertaking, requiring engagement from all those that API governance touches. While there’s a cost attached to that, it can deliver excellent returns, both in terms of your governance processes and as a way to get the best from people. Consulting with them and acting on their input on how governance can make their lives easier can ensure your people feel heard and valued. You can even turn your approach to API governance into a career development opportunity, as API industry stalwart James Higginbotham of LaunchAny points out:
“API governance creates opportunities for us to help people understand deeper about APIs and the dynamics we deliver, both organizationally and generally in terms of protocols, technologies and developer experience. That’s a powerful opportunity for coaching and career growth.”
You can read more of James’ insights in the API governance survival guide.
Like any undertaking, your journey will be easier and more impactful if you take your people along with you from the outset. Why not talk to the Tyk team about how we can help?
